Despite the support, every independent investigation shows that the 9/11 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks in which the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaida used hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2011, to destroy the World Trade Center in New York and crash into the Pentagon outside of Washington, D.C. Truthers claim the government was behind the attacks and used them as a ruse to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq while curtailing civil liberties and engage in unprecedented spying on Americans.